AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more • Hacker News Board

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#321

Post by bgnn » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

ergocoder wrote: post #180

aylmao wrote: post #174

I see the point being made here, and yeah 5%-20% extra for what amounts to insurance against geopolitics isn't too bad, but doesn't this all fall apart when China catches up? That 5%-20% is worth it now because no one else can fabricate competing chips. In a competitive market, 5%-20% can be the difference between having the price edge or not. I understand why the USA wants TSMC to manufacture outside of Taiwan, but…

With China, the issue isn't really the quality of the product. It's the geopolitical issues. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and other countries even Philippines and Vietnam don't want to depend too much on China. A lot of island disputes and so on and so forth. My guess right now is that China will never catch up because Europe, US, Australia, and many other developing countries will avoid depending on China critically. This…

Oh they will catch up as TSMC amd Samsung are running out of steam and Intel is imploding. There's nothing better than motivating China to take on this monumental effort than thd tariffs and export controls.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#322

Post by dv_dt » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #236

benreesman wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is a great example of the fact that between stupidity and low-integrity behavior as a default, the people in charge fuck up in ways that the man on the street would get right. Defense is starting to get a blank check with fairly bipartisan support for the first time in at least 30-40 years and it's centered on semiconductor supply chains . There has never been a better time to secure the fucking funding, have A…

tl;dr Intel desperately needs an activist investor.

Imho activist investors are usually about cutting investment in the future, maximizing the current accessible profits, collecting a wad of cash, then letting the company die while moving off to be active on another board.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#323

Post by SlowTao » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

alexjplant wrote: post #141

Arainach wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things go in cycles and predate Ryzen by a lot. The late-model Pentium 4 chips were overheating power-guzzling garbage compared to the Athlon XP, and the Athlon 64 was a serious competitor to the Core 2 series. Ryzen is the current incarnation of AMD coming into vogue in desktop, but it's not like it took them 40 years to get there.

The last time I built a PC was around a decade ago but I always bought AMD simply because they were cheaper for equivalent performance in the middle. Getting an adequate CPU for hundreds of dollars cheaper than the higher-end Intel chips meant that I could afford the second-highest-end GPU that NVidia had at the time. This made a lot more sense for gaming workloads as $300 towards the GPU had a much bigger effect on…

My desktop is now about 12 years old with a 1650 GTX GPU. Still does everything I need perfectly fine. It is funny seeing some lower powered offerings with iGPUs that run circles around this thing. It is looking like my next machine will probably not have a dedicated GPU, at least at first. The intergrated stuff is pretty decent when the newest games you have are about 4-5 years old or just target lower specs.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#324

Post by KoftaBob » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

lukevp wrote: post #56

timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

Intel is more than just fabs. AMD spun off digital foundry forever ago and just uses TSMC, no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. At this point their fabs are a liability. They have a new leader who’s from a semiconductor manufacturing background so I have some faith they’ll give up on the pursuit of next gen fabs and focus instead on their IP. There’s a huge opportunity in their GPU segment. They’ve gone from a joke…

> At this point their fabs are a liability.

So we're just going to hand control of the US supply of semiconductors completely over to TSMC, Samsung, and the Chinese fabs in the works? That seems incredibly short sighted and reckless.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#325

Post by avn2109 » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

tucnak wrote: post #304

CamperBob2 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate of uncertainty under Trump inhibits long-term investment, whether in chip fabs, car factories, or anything else. He has reminded us all of something that's really always been a problem: whatever one Congress or one POTUS supports can be undone by the next. Usually opposing parties have had the common sense not to immediately hit the undo button once they take office. E.g., Biden leaving most of Trump's pr…

I'm sorry, but to blame Intel's inadequacies on political climate is comedic.

Intel's C-suite is gonna pick up this line of reasoning soon! "It's not our fault the stock crashed and the fabs don't run and TSMC is eating our lunch, blame Trump instead!"

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#326

Post by bgnn » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:23 PM UTC

mmmBacon wrote: post #211

The article doesn’t say why the chips have a cost difference. The wafer cost of advanced nodes is ~$30k per wafer. Is the wafer cost different or is the yield different and hence the reason for the variance of 5-20%? All else being equal (same die size/design on same process) I suspect that a large part of the cost difference is yielded cost due to maturity of operations at the Arizona fab. Taiwan has had many years…

They brought in a bunch of process engineers from Taiwan to set up thr same processes.

It's the limited and expensive talent pool, construction costs etc. resulting in a difference. Americans do earn at least 2-3x more than someone in Taiwan for a given role.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#327

Post by rossjudson » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #297

CamperBob2 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate of uncertainty under Trump inhibits long-term investment, whether in chip fabs, car factories, or anything else. He has reminded us all of something that's really always been a problem: whatever one Congress or one POTUS supports can be undone by the next. Usually opposing parties have had the common sense not to immediately hit the undo button once they take office. E.g., Biden leaving most of Trump's pr…

The decline in what we expect of our leaders has been going on my entire life and the contrast between 20 years ago and the present is stark. In 1998 Meriwether and the rest of LTCM nearly crashed the economy, needed the Fed to get involved, and they were personally ruined , guy never opened a ten thousand dollar bottle of wine again and probably never had anything again. Shortly thereafter, Jeff Skilling took out of…

We populate our corporate leadership with non-founders so highly compensated that actually succeeding does not matter to them. They've already "won" at the game, and they spend a lot of time posturing with respect to each other. They set the membership criteria for the "club", reinforce each others' positions, and use the ability to bestow membership to manipulate the political system away from regulating or taxing them.

In other words, I completely agree.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#328

Post by avn2109 » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #312

benreesman wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if that activist investor acts with decisiveness, vision, long-term goal orientation, and demonstrates consistently high-integrity behavior. What has much more commonly produced good outcomes in such situations is robust public-private partnerships like the ones that produced the semiconductor industry in the first place. Run the list of innovations in strategically key technology and what will you find at one r…

Bad news. We’re exploding NSF, NASA and many parts of DoD. Universities are uncertain as those acts are digested. That era of American history has passed. Innovation gives way to consolidation and cronyism. Think Mussolini’s Italy.

If you have any evidence for the claim that "many parts of DoD" are being exploded/defunded, it would be really interesting to see that. As far as I can see, just the opposite is true; the military industrial complex looks like it's increasing in size and scope.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#329

Post by SlowTao » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #172

koverstreet wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD had been gradually working their way up for a long time - the K6-III was an excellent CPU for the time.

The K6 line was a functional CPU but I wouldn't call them "excellent". The K6-III was basically a K6-2 with integrated cache, much the same way the Pentium III was a Pentium II with integrated cache. Despite the fact that AMD tried to replicate Pentium branding on the K6 line, they very much competed with Celerons in terms of market place and performance. Indeed that's how they were marketed where I worked (Office Ma…

Minor correction. Athlon arrived at 500MHz, 550MHz and 600MHz. But they were still a big shock when they arrived. They were the first chip in a long while to really take on Intel and succeed.

The 650MHz came two months after than, and 700MHz another two months later. 6 months later 1GHz! It is easy to forget just how rapid performance increased in the late 90s.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#330

Post by lenerdenator » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #222

timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

Intel is a great example of the fact that between stupidity and low-integrity behavior as a default, the people in charge fuck up in ways that the man on the street would get right. Defense is starting to get a blank check with fairly bipartisan support for the first time in at least 30-40 years and it's centered on semiconductor supply chains . There has never been a better time to secure the fucking funding, have A…

> It's a failure of the will to do the right thing for both the shareholders and the country.

They've been doing the exact right thing for the shareholders: squeezing the living shit out of an asset (x86/64) for decades while cutting anything interesting or competitive to the bone to give shareholders more money. Money spent on something that could really have been competitive is money not sent to the retirement fund that keeps John and Jane Q. Public swinging in more ways than one at their golf course retirement community in Florida.

The problem is, you can only do that for so long. There is a minimum spend to remain a competitive company with regard to being able to market products to consumers. Executives don't have a fiduciary duty to create the best possible product for consumers to look at and potentially buy in the marketplace, but they do have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to meet an earnings projection. If these two activities can coexist peacefully, great. If not, the first activity stops while the company gets gutted.